Category: Music

Every year, right around Thanksgiving, radio stations start saturating the airwaves with Christmas music. Some people eat it up. Others get sick of it before Christmas Day even rolls around.

Over the years I’ve vacillated, and have landed somewhere around mild forbearance and occasional flickers of enjoyment. Some Christmas music just feels so vapid and asinine to me these days, though, that I have trouble recapturing anything near the pleasure felt in youth. Have you ever really listened to “Santa Baby?”

It’s become quite a cliched complaint – “Christmas has become too commercial.” It’s also become too secular. How many Christmas movies and songs these days completely leave out Christ? Many? Most?

Ironically, in voicing this observation it’s all too easy to sound the Grinch. I do think about this stuff a lot more now that I’m a dad, though. It’s not like I’m going to gatekeep everything my kids are exposed to, but I can certainly exert my influence. In fact I’d say it’s a parental duty.

Anyway, I’m not going to dwell on the bad right now. Instead, I’d like to share some renditions of a few of my favorite Christmas songs.

I’ve got very fond memories of the old Rankin and Bass production that HP recently reviewed. I saw it before having read the book, and no doubt it contributed (along with the other Rankin and Bass films, David the Gnome, Eureeka’s Castle, and the like) to the strange brew that fostered my strong and lasting love of fantasy and scifi.

The other day I was killing some time with my son, who’s just starting to notice shapes and colors and reach for things with his hands, and I decided to play “The Greatest Adventure” for him. Conveniently, I found a whole playlist of the OST!

And…what’s this? Track 3: Old Fat Spider.

Quite interesting. I don’t know if the Mirkwood scene involving Bilbo’s fight with the spiders was originally slated to run longer, but this song didn’t make it to the final cut.

So if you’re a fan of the animation, check it out. A nice little secret tune.

Not much new to report! The little poop goblin continues to consume a majority of my time.

At mass yesterday, I heard a certain hymn. This seems to be in rotation recently at my parish, as I remember hearing it a month or so ago for the first time. It’s become one of my favorites.

“Now the Green Blade Rises” has a rather simple but stirring melody. Something about it just grips at me, especially when performed by a full choir. Not to mention the title is just really cool and evocative (it refers to a shoot of wheat, but conjures up the image of a sweet sword or something).

Back in 2012, on the guitar brand fan forum I used to frequent, one of the members posted an announcement that he was starting a line of guitars. He designed the guitar himself, contracted a builder to make the bodies and necks and paint the bodies, and then did the finishing work himself. He showed his prototype, and his first build, and posted some clips. They looked interesting, and sounded great.

That was it for two years. He wasn’t exactly pumping out a huge volume of guitars.

In mid-2014, he posted pictures of his next build, which (IIRC, were his #3 and #4 production guitars). I had saved up some money in my guitar fund and wanted to purchase a premium guitar brand new, and I chose his.

Here is my guitar.

I had a great time discussing the build with Ben. We went through so many iterations talking about the pickups. I ended up choosing P-Rails, flipped from the recommended configuration to get a little extra twang by moving the rails farther away from each other, one closer to the bridge for brightness, and the other closer to the neck for sweetness. Then a 3-way switch to select bridge pickup, neck pickup, or both, and a 2nd 3-way switch to select P-90, rail, or both (in series/humbucking) I didn’t feel like I needed parallel wiring, nor was I worried about being able to pair the P-90 in one position with the rail in the other. It would have made the wiring and switching too complicated. I have 9 distinct, awesome tones.

Well, he’s kept up the furious pace of guitar building he set early, and production guitar #8 or #9 is up for sale (depending on when you read this, it might not be for sale any more). I’m not sure if the fraternal twin is still being prepped or has already been sold.

My guitar sounds wonderful. The neck joint is very solid and tight, and I believe that increases tone and sustain. It is wonderfully ergonomic, making it easy to play. The fit and finish is flawless. You look at it, and pick it up, and it just feels like a luxury guitar. Mine is worth every penny. It is a guitar I can never sell, for various reasons.

I feel really proud to have one of the few B-Way Mercury Head guitars. It is truly a prized possession, the jewel of my collection, and a great guitar to play.

“The Sphinx” turned out to be an interesting choice for starting off the month. Set against the backdrop of a cholera outbreak in New York, Poe immediately establishes a potent undertone of dread. In the tale, he is staying at the country cottage of a friend for the summer. Though they are distanced from the plague and surrounded by the beauty of nature, the peacefulness is tainted. Daily they receive messages about the passing of acquaintances and friends.

Poe relates his growing anxiety amid the gloom, and eventually shares the story of an experience beyond his explanation. He describes witnessing a giant horror across the river and admits that the sight made him question his sanity. This thread of madness-inducing (or sanity-questioning) horror places Poe’s influence on Lovecraft on full display, for this would become HPL’s brand through and through.

I’ll forgo explaining the ending here, in case you’d like to read it (it’s quite a short story), but suffice it to say it ends on a somewhat humorous note. Rather than madness or death, Poe issues something of a sad trombone to his literary persona.

“The City in the Sea” is a dark piece about a city in the West where Death sits upon a throne. The titular city is visited by a “long night-time” and untouched by the light of heaven. It is a place of riches and impressive constructions – domes and fanes and Babylon-like walls, and towers, and shrines.

In the end, the waters turn red and Hell rises to do reverence to the city.

I was quite impressed by the poem, though I can’t say I fully grasp every element of it. It sounds much as if the city is a domain of Hell on earth (how’s that for a commentary on Western civilization), and yet one of the earliest lines says

“Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best
Have gone to their eternal rest. ”

Perhaps this line is speaking of the West in general, rather than the city. Otherwise I’m not quite sure what to make of this haunting place, beautiful and yet foul, if the best be there as well as the worst.

In an earlier form, the poem was titled “The Doomed City,” and was later reworked and renamed “The City of Sin” and then finally “The City in the Sea.” Inspirations for the work are said to include the Biblical city of Gamorrah and Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan.” It would go on to inspire other creators, including Danish composer Poul Ruders:

Overall, I’d say this was a pleasing reintroduction to Edgar Allan Poe. Much like Howard and Lovecraft before I’d read and researched further about them, his work was more varied than I’d realized.